AF, as you know, fortuitous is the name of the game in this genre. I'd say that in ALL photography of its kind, serendipity is the key player. Technical mastery is a given which can be mastered with a lot of frustration. But you can't predict the next moment in the street. Much of it is an accidental coming together of elements within a frame. All you can hope for is sharp focus and a good shutter speed, but mostly, you can't even depend on any of that.

It's easy to become uncertain about your own pictures, your babies. It's a great mistake to confuse the EMOTION you felt at the moment of taking the shot, against the actual merits of the image later on. For many years, I've gone over old files and have been horrified by how bad most of them were - and how I found a few of them at least interesting. It's a revelation - basically about yourself.

Beautifully put, Seamus, and right on the money. I keep running into people who think street photography is easy. After all, there usually are people on the street, and all you have to do is go out there, raise your camera, and shoot.

Sometimes I find myself in so-called exotic places. I raise my camera and then put it down because I think: how am I going to capture a better picture of this that hasn't been taken already? That's when I go back to wandering the streets, where I know things happen that will never happen again and I may be lucky to capture something of it. Or not. Unfortunately, usually not! It sure ain't like shooting landscapes!

It would, and is, but there comes a point in all creativity when you have to move on.

Millions of people click snapshots in any given hour, and take pleasure in it - and email them instantaneously and indiscriminately across the globe, whether the world is interested or not. Mostly, their friends are delighted - proof of a happy life. Nothing wrong with that.

Fair play to these shooters who usually have no interest in photography as an art form and pay no intrinsic attention outside their own circle. They see a picture of themselves: it's 'nice' or it isn't. Either way, they flood a nearby social network - and add the information that they had a cup of coffee. Hopefully, these snapshots will, in the future, assume a position in a family archive, but I fear mostly they will disappear down a digital black hole.

As for a print, well, no need. In the modern world, an image on the screen is a valediction in itself: 'I was there, this is us enjoying ourselves, I remember my Dad had stuff in the attic... Wow, you must have a fantastic camera. Or even better, a phone'.

"What is to become of all these photographic documents? How many will survive? I, for one, concentrate on the next picture I'm going to take. I went out this morning and took two near the subway. It's my way of keeping a diary, of sketching."